The Most Beautiful Woman in the World (8 page)

“When I’m married, will you come to see us?” she asked.

“I don’t think so, Bessie Mae,” he replied.

“I thought you were always going to be my friend, my good, good friend,” she said, slamming down the receiver.
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When she kept calling Monty in New York, describing the thrill of being courted by a robust and dashing fiancé, Monty, loving her but knowing he could never satisfy her, was rattled and shakily downed big highball glasses full of Jack Daniels after each call.

On February 21, the Taylors gave a formal tea at home to announce their daughter’s engagement. Elizabeth still had misgivings. Ironically, she shared them with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, her screen parents in
Bride
, instead of her real parents. “I felt sorry for Elizabeth,” Joan told me. “I played her mother in
Bride
and
Father’s Little Dividend
because our coloring was the same. Nicky was nuts. Spence knew it but didn’t have the nerve to warn her off. Who did? She was bent on matrimony at any cost—on the rebound from Montgomery Clift and upset that Jane Powell had beat her to the altar. Nicky had no interest in her work, which is very important to Elizabeth. When she offered to introduce Nicky to Spence and me, he said, ‘Skip it.’”

Elizabeth’s leading man in
Bride
was thirty-year-old Don Taylor, a former drama major at Penn State who’d hitchhiked to L.A. and then left to serve in WWII, appearing in
Winged Victory
. On screen, he and Elizabeth were made for each other. Metro decided after
Bride
to team them in a series of newlywed films.

Francis Taylor didn’t approve of Elizabeth’s proposed conversion to the Catholic faith. In April Elizabeth, too, had second thoughts, after learning that she’d have to sign an oath promising to bring her children up in the church. At Metro, which was performing corporate somersaults to support her wedding because of all the free publicity for
Bride
, Pandro Berman predicted a flare-up of what he called Elizabeth’s “crazy defiance.”
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The couple reached a compromise, and on April 15 an announcement appeared in newspapers stating that though the wedding ceremony would be Roman Catholic, Elizabeth would remain Protestant. Journalists warned Sara that Nicky was a drunk, but she continued to give her blessing to the marriage, as did Metro. “Mr. Mayer liked to make big publicity splashes out of marriages,” recalled Hedy Lamarr, who’d defied L. B. when she’d eloped to marry scenarist Gene Markey.

When L. B. was ousted as chief of Metro, the effects were felt on the set of
Bride
. Mayer’s successor, Dore Schary, foolishly insisted on Jack Benny for the role of Elizabeth’s father, but fortunately director Vincente Minnelli fought for Tracy and saved the picture. Tracy, like Elizabeth, was one of the industry’s rare one-take wonders, according to Eddie Dmytryk, who directed Tracy in
The Mountain
. “Tracy got nasty when he got drunk, like Richard [Burton], but Spence only drank once in a while—a periodic drinker—and most of the time, he was perfectly fine on the set, spoke his lines, never had a drop, the kind of a guy you didn’t have to check on pace. He understood pace, which a lot of actors don’t.” Francis Taylor said he envied Spence, because all the actor had to do was pretend to be the father of the bride. Being the real thing was enough to bankrupt a man. To help with expenses, Metro office workers chipped in and paid for the cost of the bridesmaids’ dresses.

The Taylor-Hilton wedding was the great celebrity event of 1950, held at 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 6, at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills—“Our Lady of the Cadillacs,” as it was known, because of the richness of the parishioners. Stalled traffic clogged Santa Monica Boulevard for miles. “The whole more-stars-than-there-are-in-the-heavens crowd was out,” recalled Joan Bennett, “the whole Metro gang, everybody from Gene Kelly to me and Spence, L. B. himself, Fred Astaire, June Allyson, Van Johnson, Debbie Reynolds, Esther Williams, George Murphy, the lot. Gals like Shearer, Garbo, and Greer Garson had always been the queens of Metro, but Elizabeth was the princess, and you’d jolly well better show up, because the studio sent out the invitations, promoting
Father of the Bride
.” The town’s gossip mavens were naturally in attendance, including Radie Harris, Hedda Hopper, Louella O. Parsons, and Sheilah Graham.

Sweating in the 104-degree temperature, two hundred studio police held back ten thousand fans, who began cheering when Elizabeth’s limo arrived with six motorcycle policemen. There was an awkward moment when she caught her dress on the door handle as she tried to exit the car. She had to duck back in and start all over. Finally the driver unsnagged her and she emerged into the sunlight, a vision in white satin, ten yards of veiling floating around her. Helen Rose and fifteen MGM seamstresses had spent two months embroidering the gown with beige beads and seed pearls, and a cream-tinted tiara and satin slippers completed the bride’s ensemble. Guilaroff had styled her hair, and MGM set decorators had laid a white runner down the center aisle, tying white silk bows to the pillars and placing bouquets of white carnations and lilies throughout the church. Six hundred invited guests watched her walk down the aisle to Wagner’s “Wedding March.”

Dressed in saffron yellow, the bridesmaids included Jane Powell, Marjorie Dillon, Mrs. Barron Hilton, Mrs. Marshall Thompson, Betty Sullivan Precht, Mara Regan, and Anne Westmore, a friend and neighbor since childhood, whose family founded the well-known Hollywood cosmetics firm. Elizabeth’s family, Conrad, and Zsa Zsa sat in the front pews. After a Catholic Mass, Nicky slipped a $10,000 platinum-and-diamond wedding band on Elizabeth’s finger, and they kissed so long that Monsignor Patrick J. Concannon told Elizabeth, “I think that’s long enough, dear.” Later, as Conrad stood with Mrs. Mary Saxon, his former wife and Nicky’s mother, in the receiving line at the Spanish-style Bel Air Country Club, Mary said, “They have too much. I don’t think it’s going to be easy for them.” Edith Head had designed Elizabeth’s going-away outfit, a blue silk suit with matching linen shoes and bag, and a white-on-white embroidered blouse and gloves. She carried a blue-gray mink stole. It was much too hot for fur, but she knew her fans expected to see her in mink.

Leaving on their honeymoon, they drove up the California coast to the Monterey Peninsula, where they stayed at a sumptuous private resort overlooking the Pacific Ocean. One of the bellboys immediately annoyed Nicky by calling him Mr. Taylor, an ominous omen that was followed by one far more alarming. The groom spent his wedding night in the bar, getting drunk. Elizabeth later complained that he ignored her, “told me to go to hell.”
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When I asked Edward Dmytryk in 1998 what went wrong with the marriage, he said, “On their honeymoon, she was in her room waiting for him and he was down in the bar drinking and came in very very late and they got into a fight. He was not a gentleman at all.” Nicky had learned about women from his father, a man who pursued glamour gals but couldn’t live with them.

The second night, Nicky stayed in the bar again, drinking himself into a stupor, but on the third, Elizabeth finally got him into bed, and evidently it was well worth the wait.
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Nicky had tremendous stamina as a lover, said two of his later sex partners, Joan Collins and Terry Moore, both of whom were awestruck by his manliness and gymnastics.
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On subsequent nights, eager to please, Elizabeth joined him in the bar and drank herself sick. When she went to bed, Nicky remained in the bar flirting with other women. The hellish honeymoon came to an end after ten days. Elizabeth returned to Elm Drive on Mother’s Day, and when a reporter asked Sara why Nicky wasn’t present, she said, “Elizabeth and I have never been apart on Mother’s Day.”

Bringing the newlyweds back together, Conrad staked them to a three-month European vacation with stops in France, Italy, and England. They departed from New York on the
Queen Mary
on May 23. Nicky promptly dropped $100,000 in the casino and took out his rage on Elizabeth. Passengers saw him shove her up against a bulkhead after she’d walked away from him in anger. Shaking his finger in her face, he snarled, “Don’t you ever do that to me—
I’m talking to you
!” The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were on board and became lifelong friends of Elizabeth, later hosting a supper party for the Hiltons in Paris. The Duchess told Elsa Maxwell, “You’d have thought at times they were a couple reaching the end of their marriage, rather than beginning one.”
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Interviewed in 1998 in Key West, Joanne Jacobson, wife of the then-owner of Pocket Books, said, “My friends Sylvia and Ed Sullivan were on the Riviera when Nicky and Elizabeth honeymooned in Cap Ferrat in 1950. Nicky was an alcoholic. He and Elizabeth visited the Ed Sullivans, and Sylvia told me, ‘Nicky paid far too much attention to me and completely ignored his beautiful bride.’ Elizabeth was desperate for Nicky’s attention and affection, and he ignored her, but would stay up drinking with Sylvia.”

Refusing to adjust to being a working woman’s husband, Nicky rebelled when she asked him to wait for two hours while she signed fans’ autograph books. Although glamour at Elizabeth’s level meant never being seen in the same dress twice, Nicky was a pinch-penny like his father and groused when she spent the 1990s equivalent of $50,000 for a Balmain gown to wear to a Paris ball. Later, boarding the
Queen Elizabeth
at Cherbourg in September 1950, she showed reporters her new French poodle and said, “His name is Bianco, and I bought him in Paris
with
–
my
–
own
–
money
.” On the transatlantic crossing she ran into Elsa Maxwell, who later reported that Elizabeth was twelve pounds lighter and had taken up smoking. Her new figure was not becoming; she looked haggard and unhealthy.

In New York, Nicky split for California. She checked into the Plaza and called MGM, gasping, “Send someone to bring me home. I can’t take any more of this.”
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Metro promised to dispatch a representative to meet her during her Chicago stopover. Instead, she remained in New York, staying with Sondra Voluck, a young woman her age she’d met in Cannes, who lived with her family at 927 Fifth Avenue. Both Sara and Nicky were on the phone to her constantly, urging a reconciliation. Nicky drove to Chicago in his car to meet her, and the couple returned to the Coast together.

They moved into a luxurious two-bedroom suite at the Bel Air Hotel, in which Nicky owned a forty-one percent interest. Patricia Schmidlapp, mother of Nicky’s second wife Trish McClintock, said, “Regarding Elizabeth Taylor, Nicky didn’t care for her from the beginning.”
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He complained that the cozy welcome-home party Jane Powell gave them was a bore, though the guests included most of Elizabeth’s favorite people: Betty Precht, Anne Westmore, Marshall and Barbara Thompson, and Mara Regan, who’d become engaged to Howard Taylor. Nicky preferred the high life of Rome and Paris and thought it corny of Jane to serve a buffet supper and expect her guests to sit on the floor. Elizabeth loved the informality and the chance it gave her to relax and have fun. Later, when Anne Westmore invited them, Nicky absolutely refused to go, saying he was through with “kids’ games.” He flew to Las Vegas, and Elizabeth went to Palm Springs, checking into the Mira-mar Hotel. Before she’d spent five minutes alone, she burst into tears, realizing how much she missed him. Suddenly, Nicky appeared at the door and took her in his arms, explaining that he couldn’t stand Vegas without her. They had several passionate days together, but within a month their volatile tempers flared again, and they were at each other tooth and nail.
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When she began filming
Father’s Little Dividend
, a sequel to
Father of the Bride
depicting the normal experiences of early marriage—spats, reconciliations, conceiving a baby—she wished she could apply some of the wisdom in the movie to her own marriage and was sad she didn’t. In October 1999 she revealed for the first time that Nicky had kicked her in the stomach, causing a miscarriage. “He was drunk . . . I didn’t know that I was pregnant, so it wasn’t a malicious or on-purpose kind of act . . . I had terrible pains. This is not why I was put on earth. God did not put me here to have a baby kicked out of my stomach . . . I saw the baby in the toilet.” While she was in bed recovering from the assault, he blithely announced that he was going deep-sea fishing and advised her to spend the night with Marjorie Dillon, her stand-in. On December 6, 1950, they had a brawl that ended in his calling her “a fucking bore” and telling her to “get the hell out.” Fleeing in the middle of the night to Marjorie Dillon, she told
Life
’s Brad Darrah many years later, “You can’t allow yourself to be killed.”
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The marriage was over, having lasted less than a year. “I left him after nine months of marriage after having a baby kicked out of my stomach,” she said in 1999. She was afraid to return to her parents because she couldn’t admit what a mess she’d made of her life after having told Sara at the wedding, “Oh Mother! Nick and I are one now, for ever and ever.” Getting a divorce was still a disgrace in 1950, but she began discussing it when she moved in with her agent-lawyer, Jules Goldstone, and his wife. Exhausted and moody, she was chain-smoking and suffering from colitis and an ulcer.

In early December, Metro issued a statement that clearly indicated the studio was on her side and would do anything to defend her: “It’s doubtful they’ll get together again . . . They always fight about the same thing, his gambling and playing around and ignoring her as a wife. They both have a temper.” This was followed on December 17, 1950, by a Metro release containing Elizabeth’s formal statement: “Nick and I . . . have come to a final parting of the ways . . . There is no possibility of a reconciliation.”
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